It is well known in the carrier shipping industry to distribute standardized charts public rates for manifest mail carrier systems. These standard rates are available to anyone who meets the basic conditions for doing business with the carrier. Each carrier typically also offers several standard classes of service. Rates may be based on items such as service level, weight, distance and the like.
In addition to the standard rates offered, for competitive reasons a carrier may wish to offer special discounted rates individually to preferred customers. These custom rates are typically individually negotiated. The structure for these rates then will be a standard base rate suitable for all shippers less an individualized discount structure based on parameters such as the weight and zone to which a package is shipped.
In application Ser. No. 887,616, filed May 22, 1992, entitled FLEXIBLE APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR APPLYING CUSTOMIZED RATING ADJUSTMENTS TO TRANSACTION CHARGES, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,246, and assigned to the assignee of the present application, there is described a system for automatically processing this transaction data. The memory of the computer in accordance with this referenced application contains data bases with authorized security access codes, standard rates, and data for individual discount rates which are accessed and applied to charges initially computed using the standard rate structure to determine the actual fee based on the various rates.
While this has worked well for the user and is useful in conventional devices such as the Hawk, A2000, and A10000 marketed by Pitney Bowes, the application discloses that a particular final discount chart or program is generated for each carrier and forwarded to the shipper. The national and regional rates and any surcharges are combined at one level into a single discount or surcharge to the overall base rate to provide the overall charges. Other systems provide to each user a single convoluted chart for determining the final charge including any discounts. This chart requires extensive changes each time any one of the various rates is changed. These charts are labor intensive with a required quick turnaround time and as a consequence errors can readily occur and it has been found that the charts require extensive tests so as to assure reliability.